Ozarks Exposure: Glade Top Trail offers gorgeous views

Dec. 3, 2012

A southward view from the Glade Top Trail on October 28. / Valerie Mosley/News-Leader

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When two people told me about the Glade Top Trail on the same October day, I wanted to see it before the trees shed their leaves. So a few days later my husband, Jamie, and I packed a picnic lunch and headed east to find the scenic byway.

The 23-mile gravel road in the Mark Twain National Forest, originally built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the late 1930s, borders the Hercules Glades Wilderness Area.

Along the drive you can see the Boston Mountains in Arkansas to the south and the Springfield Plateau to the north. The views were just as gorgeous as promised. I couldn’t help wondering what other seasons look like, so I asked the experts at the U.S. Forest Service.

“There’s a lot of beauty year round,” said Jennie Farenbaugh, district ranger for the Ava/Cassville/Willow Springs District.

In the winter you can hear the wildlife rustling in the leaves, and you might see deer, roadrunners, hawks, coyotes, foxes or turkeys, said Wildlife Biologist Nettie Sittingup-Perez. Black bear and feral hog sightings are also possible but less likely, she added. “There’s a lot of tranquility in the winter,” Farenbaugh said.

Currently, fall leaves are still dropping and the fall primroses coming up look “like stars have fallen from the sky,” Farenbaugh said. Shooting star flowers are Sittingup-Perez’s favorite. Those and a host of other wildflowers along with dogwood and redbud blossoms will wait until spring to emerge.

Once again, it’s not even officially winter and I’m already longing for spring.